It’s also Ashley’s birthday, so Ivy is super excited because she gets to go to a princess party.

Was up early this morning beginning an outline for a story – it it something worth finishing and trying to get published? Or like every other project I start will I get halfway there and lose interest. We’ve yet to see.

John Scalzi recently wrote a post entitled “Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money“. It’s a great read for anyone who is, or is considering being, a freelancer. Not just writers, though that’s what it’s geared towards.

Interestingly, this has always been a day-dream of mine. However, I know I have the fiscal and time management skills of a slightly retarded rock, so I know it’s never going to happen unless I become independently wealthy.

Here is a quick excerpt:

“Lots of wanna-be writers wax rhapsodic about how great it would be to ditch the day job and just spend all their time clickety-clack typing away. These folks are idiots. Look, people: someone is paying you money and giving you benefits, both of which can support your writing career, and all you have to do is show up, do work that an unsupervised monkey could do, and pretend to care. What a scam! You’re sticking it to The Man, dude, because you’re taking that paycheck and turning it into art. And you know how The Man hates that. You’re supposed to be buying a big-screen TV with that paycheck! Instead, you’re subverting the dominant paradigm better than an entire battalion of college socialists. Well done, you. Well done, indeed.”

He continues in this vein thusly:

“People who aren’t full-time writers tend to have a hazy, romanticized view of the full-time writing life, in which writers wake up, clock four-to-six hours of writing truth, and then knock off for the rest of the day to be drunk and brilliant with all the rest of their writer friends. They tend to gloss over the little things like all the time you spend worrying about where the next writing gig is coming from, or all the e-mails and phone calls to publishers reminding them that, hey, they’ve owed you a check for nine months now, or (due to the previous) deciding which bill you can allow to go to a second or third notice, or the constant pressure to produce something you can sell, because you’ve heard of this crazy idea called “eating,” and you think you might like to give it a whirl. The full-time writing life isn’t about writing full-time; it’s about a full-time quest to get paid for your writing, both in selling the work, and then (alas) in collecting what you are owed. It’s not romantic; it’s a pain in the ass.”

It’s worth a read. The whole thing is full of good financial advice, specifically geared towards freelancers, but applicable really, to anyone.

I’m thinking of finishing a story I’ve been working on and putting it up online as an electronic book. I would ask for donations that could be mailed or paypal-ed to me if you liked the story.

This has been done successfully before, but by much greater writers than myself. John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow ( who coincidentally, I just found out, is Canadian. Eh!) come to mind especially.

So – good idea or bad. Feedback?

Edit:

The counterpoint to this of course is, where in heck will I find the time! I’m already so far behind on life I think I’m ahead. Have you seen that pregnancy counter in the upper right hand corner? 63 days! Yikes. But if it’s a way to start publishing and maybe meet my goals, then it’s worth making the time right.